Monday, October 31, 2016

This is my senior seminar essay. Footnotes are not in my current starter edition of Microsoft Word, so I do not have the citations at this time.

Protestantism was bursting out of
the seams of the Roman Catholic Church wherever it had the opportunity in the
16th century. Yet, there was not a single reformation in the
Orthodox East resembling the reformations of the Lutherans, the Reformed, the
Radical Reformers, or the Anglicans. The reason for this is not entirely a
geographical or political coincidence. While geography and politics certainly
played a role, I will show how the differences between the Christian East and
West in matters of faith and practice greatly hindered the potential for
reformation in the Christian East.The
ideas coming out of Germany could not inspire the Greeks to reform to the
extent that they inspired Westerners such as the Scots. To show this, I will
primarily examine the correspondence between the Lutheran Tubingen Theologians
and Orthodox Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople from the years 1573-1579.

The relationship between Orthodoxy
and Lutheranism was present at the beginning. Luther, based on his knowledge of
Church history, expressed appreciation for the faith and practice of what he
called the “Greek Church” over and against certain aspects of Roman
Catholicism. The first real contact occurred when Patriarch Joasaph of Constantinople sent
the Serbian deacon Demetrios to investigate the Reformation in Germany.Demetrios was taken in by Philip Melanchthon,
whom he greatly admired. In 1559,
Melanchthon wrote [his authorship is disputed] a Greek edition of the Augsburg
Confession called the Augustana Graeca. This document has a few alterations for
the intention of making it more understandable to the Eastern Orthodox. Melanchthon
sent Demetrios with the Augustana Graeca and a cordial letter to Patriarch
Joasaph. However, it appears these documents never arrived. Demetrios was
diverted in Wallachia, and died before reaching Constantinople.

In 1573, a group of theologians in Tubingen,
led by Martin Crusius and Jakob Andreae, set out to reestablish contact. The
opportunity arose when Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II chose a devout Lutheran
as his ambassador at the imperial embassy in Constantinople. Ambassador David Ungnad
was a graduate of the University of Tubingen, and requested a court chaplain
from there.
Crusius was the classics professor at the university and was supposedly the
greatest classicist in Europe at the time. He was naturally excited at the
prospect of contact with the Greeks for academic purposes. Andreae
was the most highly renowned theologian at Tubingen, and he and Crusius had religious
interest in contacting the Eastern Orthodox.
They selected a promising graduate named Stephen Gerlach to be the embassy chaplain
for Ungnad.
Crusius often exercised his incredible linguistic talent by translating
Andreae’s sermons into Greek as he preached them on Sunday. They sent one of
these sermons with Gerlach, in addition to a letter from each of them to the
Patriarch. On
October 15, 1573, Gerlach ceremoniously delivered the letters from Andreae and
Crusius to Patriarch Jeremias II, initiating the first meeting between a
clerical representative of the Protestant Reformation and the Ecumenical
Patriarch of the Orthodox Church.

Having established contact with the
Orthodox, the Lutherans followed up by sending the 1559 Augustana Graeca on
September 15, 1574, asking the Patriarch for a response.
Their motives of initiating a reformation in the East are expressed by Crusius,
who wrote, “If they wish to take thought for the eternal salvation of their
souls, they must join us and embrace our teaching, or else perish eternally!” Gerlarch received five more copies of the Augustana Graeca, which he
distributed to the theological advisors of the Patriarch. After receiving his
copy on May 24, 1575, Jeremias set to work on a careful point-by-point response,
which he completed on April 30, 1576, urging the Lutherans to convert to
Orthodoxy.
The Lutherans, realizing that uniting the Orthodox to their cause was unlikely,
shifted their efforts from conversion to apologetic defense.
The Lutherans replied to Jeremias’s response, as well as to two other letters
sent by him. In his third doctrinal response, Jeremias signals an end to the
correspondence with the words, “Therefore, going about your own ways, write no
longer concerning dogmas; but if you do, write only for friendship’s sake.
Farewell.”

Before discussing the lack of
potential for Reformation in the Christian East, it is appropriate to examine
the extent that the Protestant reformation did have impact. Several Orthodox,
such as the previously mentioned Demetrios, were greatly sympathetic to the
cause of the Reformation.
Michael Katakouzenos was a Greek prince who received one of the five copies of
the Augustana Graeca. He held the document in such high esteem that he had it
bound in red leather and translated into contemporary Greek.
Under the yoke of Turkish rule, most Greek theologians had to receive training
in the West by Protestants or Catholics. Ecumenical Patriarch Cyril
Lukaris published his Confession in
1629, a work that expressed Calvinist teaching. His Protestant influenced work
was quickly rejected by several Church councils. To secure power for
himself, Peter the Great abolished the Russian patriarchate and established a
Holy Synod. He modelled this after the infrastructure of the Lutheran Church in
Germany rather than Orthodox precedent. Under Peter’s Synod, the
Orthodox Church in Russia experienced a temporary and partial Westernization in
art, music, and theology. Despite all this, it must generally be
said that, “The forces of Reform stopped when they reached the borders of
Russia and the Turkish Empire, so that the Orthodox Church has not undergone
either a Reformation or a Counter-Reformation.” None of the Western
influenced theologians became an Eastern Luther or Zwingli, and Peter the Great
did not come near to matching King Henry VIII’s legacy.

The first formal declaration of a
Catholic abuse in the Augsburg Confession is Article 22, which complains
against the restriction of the laity from the blood of Christ in the Eucharist.
The Patriarch’s response to this is the shortest of all the article responses,
reaching 44 words [English translation]. It gives a simple statement of
agreement with the Lutherans, with the clarification that the Orthodox use leavened
bread. This
contrasts greatly with the official Roman Catholic response in The Confutatio Pontificia. The Catholics
zealously defend the practice of withholding the wine in a 1,258 word [English
translation] refutation of the article. Using Scripture and Tradition, they
argue that to offer the blood of Christ to the laity, rather than just the
clergy, is an “abuse and disobedience.” Even the Catholic
Church has ultimately found the practice of withholding the wine to be
undesirable, as Catholic laity now frequently receive wine at the Eucharist.
Many found the practice to be undesirable before the Catholic Church changed
its position, and the Reformation was a potential solution here. However, there
is no need for a solution if there is no problem. Luther himself highly praised
the Orthodox Church for its administering of both elements, saying the
practice,

still continues among the
Greeks, whom even Rome itself dare not call heretics or schismatics because of
it. . . I now say that on this point the Greeks and Bohemians are not heretics
or schismatics but the most Christian people and the best followers of the
Gospel on earth.

When considering
this quote, it is little wonder that no parallel to Luther rose up in the
Orthodox Church. Melanchthon also praises the Greeks, saying, “in the Greek churches this practice
[Communion in both kinds] still remains, as it also once prevailed in the Latin
Church, as Cyprian and Jerome attest.” The desire for allowing both kinds is also expressed by the Anglicans on
article 30 of The Thirty-Nine Articles of
Religion. On the point of the Eucharist, the Catholic Church had a weakness
against the Protestantism not shared by the Orthodox Church.

The second abuse declared in the
Augsburg Confession is the restrictions of the clergy from marriage. To this,
Jeremias replies, “We too permit those priests who are unable to remain
celibate to marry before ordination. God has ordained marriage, and we are not
ignorant that severe disorders take place among those in the clergy who have
been prevented from being married.”
One difference here is that the Orthodox restricted priest from marrying after
ordination, whereas the Lutherans encouraged former Catholic clergy to
disregard their vows of celibacy. The Confutatio
reaffirms the Catholic position of celibate clergy. The
Anglicans also complain against the Catholics on this point in Article 32 of
their Articles. This is a complaint
that the Orthodox Church was far less vulnerable to than the Catholics.

The third abuse listed in the
Augsburg Confession is the way in which the Catholics perform the mass. The
Lutheran theologians argue that using the vernacular teaches the common people
what they should know about Christ. It is also commanded by Paul in 1 Cor.
14:19. Jeremias makes no comment on this aspect of the complaint, for the
Orthodox Church has always encouraged, rather than restricted, the use of the
vernacular. The Divine Liturgy was performed in Greek for the Greeks, Arabic
for the Arabs, Slavonic for the Slavs, Georgian for the Georgians, et cetera.
There are examples of parishes in the West using Greek, but this is due to the
fact that these parishes are often composed of Greek-speaking immigrant
communities. On the other hand, the Confutatio
defends the use of Latin for the sake of unity. Some Catholics point to
examples of vernacular use in the Roman Catholic Church before the Protestant
Reformation, but this does not change the fact that, as a rule, Latin was used
at the expense of the vernacular. As the Confutatio
states, “First, it is displeasing that, in opposition to the usage of the entire Roman Church, they perform
ecclesiastical rites not in the Roman, but in the German language...”
In Article 24 of their Articles, the
Anglican Reformers express their shared concern with the Lutherans over the use
of language, “It is a thing plainly repugnant to the word of God and the custom
of the primitive Church, to have public prayer in the Church, or to minister
the sacraments in a tongue not understood by the people.” Like the issue of the
two substances, the Roman Catholic Church has, in practice, adopted the
position of the Protestants and Orthodox by using the vernacular during mass.
This is an issue that pressured Reformation in the Western Church and could not
be applied to the Church in the East.

The seventh and final complaint against the Catholic Church in Augsburg
Confession is the power of the Bishops. They criticize the Catholic Church for
having its clergy exercise religious matters with the authority of a position
of the State, saying, “the power of the Church and the civil power must not be
confounded.” Jeremias expresses agreement, saying, “there is not small
difference among the [civil and religious] commandments.”
It should be noted that Patriarch Jeremias himself was assigned by the Ottoman
Empire to be the ethnarch, a religious and civic representative of the
Christian Greeks. However, any secular powers of Orthodox bishops hardly
paralleled those of many Catholic bishops, who often ran theocracies and led
armies into battle. This is the fourth, and final, major criticism the
Lutherans weighed against the Catholic Church in which they did not find fault
in the Orthodox Church.

It has been shown that
several protested issues the reformers used against the Catholic Church could
not be equally applied as reasons to reform the Orthodox Church, but what about
where the Orthodox and Catholics agree against the Protestants? Even here,
while the Catholics and Orthodox have many external similarities, they often
have a different foundational reasoning for these similarities. The Protestant
Reformers shared with the Roman Catholics certain Western understandings of the
Christian faith, and were therefore able to fight on the same ideological battlefield.
However, the Tubingen theologians and Jeremias often spoke past each other when
they argued during the correspondence. As Jorgenson says it,

Lack of previous contact
enhanced a myopic insensitivity to the church life and theological perspectives
of the other. The Greeks were profoundly unaware of the pervading spiritual and
theological restlessness which sparked the revolt against the medieval Roman
Church. The Lutherans, on their part, shared, in general, the unfamiliarity of
the Latin West with the theological, spiritual, and liturgical tradition of the
Greek Church.

Certain Protestant positions could not be applied as easily on an Eastern
foundational understanding as they could on a Western one.

The responses to Article
III of the Augsburg Confession reveal a difference between the East and West.
Article III is a short relatively short statement concerning the nature and
mission of Christ. The Catholic Confutatio
offers a short statement of agreement, saying, “In the third article there is
nothing to offend...” For some reason, Jeremias neither confirmed, nor
denied the Lutheran statement. Rather, he responded by restating the 12 Articles
of the Creed, and by discussing what Christ accomplished using reasoning
independent of what the Lutherans had stated. The Augustans Graeca put it this
way:

So then one Christ, truly
God and truly man, born of the ever-virgin Mary, truly suffered, was crucified,
died, and was buried, in order to
reconcile the Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for the ancient
transgression and the calling to account of the human race, but also for all
things whichsoever are worthy of condemnation which are done by man in
transgressing the law.

While Jeremias provides a far more exhaustive explanation of the work of
Christ, nowhere in his response to article III does he explain Christ’s work as
reconciling the Father to humanity as a sacrifice for transgressing the law.
Today, the Orthodox reject a penal substitution understanding that the
Lutherans would have had, and would say Christ worked to reconcile humanity to
the Father. In his response to the fifth article, Jeremias does present a penal
substitution metaphor, but, like Jesus’s parable of the vineyard workers, it is
narrowly applied for a specific purpose. Jeremias was likely
unprepared to understand the extent that the West had taken a judicial
understanding of salvation after Anselm.

In his response to the
third article, rather than explaining Christ’s salvific work in the Creed by a satisfaction
for transgression, Jeremias expands upon the incarnation and life of Christ:

Humility is aroused by the
descent of God, the Logos, from the heavens; modesty, by the Incarnation;
poverty, fasting, and purity, in that He was like that; patience and
forbearance because He had all these, and finally endured the cross and death.
The Savior abolished every iniquity. By humility, He abolished pride from which
comes unbelief and blasphemy against God. By lowliness, He abolished ambition
from which are engendered madness, envy and murder. By poverty, He abolished
greed from which come stealing, deciet, lying, and treachery against God.”
(Mastrantonis 35)

This is only a section of Jeremias’s larger discussion on the work of
Christ. According to Jeremias, the salvific work of Christ was to fix human
nature by living and dying properly as a human. Through his incarnation, life,
death, and resurrection, the Logos overcame sin and death in the human person.
To clarify the distinction: the West has an emphasis on the death of Christ not
shared by the East, and the East has an emphasis on the incarnation of Christ
not shared by the West.

The concern in the West
was how to attain the merit of Christ by having His condemnation cancel out
one’s own condemnation. From this, the Catholics developed the idea of a
treasury of merit to which the Church had access. If a Christian does a certain
act of penance for a post-baptism sin, the Church can bestow merit on the
individual and release that person from penalty for sin. The Lutherans argued
that Christ’s merit is fully accessible by faith alone, “The Holy Scriptures
ascribe righteousness before God and everlasting salvation not to our virtues
and works, but alone to the superior merit of Christ, which we can acquire only
through faith.” Rather than attaining the merit of
Christ on account of His death, the concern in the East was how to grow in the
nature of the Second Adam on account of the incarnation. This renders the
Protestant Reformation as far less effective in addressing Eastern concerns
than Western concerns.

While arguing on the
topic of justification and good works, Jeremias emphasizes the link between salvation
and the incarnation, “the Logos of God, out of merciful compassion, has set us
free by becoming man.” This shows that when Jeremias speaks of “justification,” he hardly means
what the Lutherans do when they speak of it. As Jorgenson says, “The Orthodox
Christian has no way of relating immediately to the sharp cleavage between the
three levels of faith, to justification as a forensic non-imputation of sins,
and to the separateness between justification and sanctification.” On this topic, Jeremias and the Lutherans frequently spoke past each
other. For example, the Lutherans wrote,

it is a matter lacking merit
that our salvation be divided between us and Christ, as if we are able to
absolve our own sins together with God in such a manner that a part of the
achievement of the Mediator Christ would be attributed to us, also, and that it
might happen to be said that we would in some way also be saviors, which would
be an extreme absurdity.

The book Orthodoxy and Catholicity explains
the disconnect between this Western way of thinking and that of the Orthodox:

In Christ, our will is
active, but in a redeemed, new manner; it does not only “receive,” it acts, but
not in order to fulfil a “requirement” which would have been left unfulfilled
by God; our will acts in Christ in order to fulfil in itself the image of the
Creator which was obscured by the fall but which has been restored in Jesus- in
its former beauty.

It is from this framework that Jeremias reasons for the necessity of human
effort in his third response. Man was made in the image of God, with the
potential for attaining His likeness, for Genesis never mentions the completion
of the likeness. By definition, Jeremias understands attaining the likeness of
God (deification) to be salvation. If, Jeremias argues, it were not necessary
for us to participate in attaining the likeness, then why did God not grant it
to us at creation as He granted the image? Jeremias argues that the attaining
the likeness of God demands our participation by its very nature. Both the Lutherans and Jeremias argue brilliantly, but they fail to
address each other’s arguments, as they were working from different theological
foundations. This shows one aspect of why the Protestant Reformation was not
compatible with the East: the Protestant ideas could only be constructed well
if they were built upon a Western foundation.

The Protestant
Reformation had less to complain about when it reached the Orthodox. The
Lutherans expressed great joy at this, saying, “We are very glad indeed (how
think you?) that between Your Holiness and us there is agreement on many of the
subjects in question.” Jeremias felt they had enough in
common that the Lutherans did not have many obstacles preventing conversion,
“since we have agreed on almost all of the main subjects, it is not necessary
for you to interpret and understand some of the passages of the Scripture in
any other way than that in which the luminaries of the Church and Ecumenical
Teachers have interpreted.” The fact that many Protestant
complaints against the Catholic Church could not apply as easily to the
Orthodox Church prevented the Orthodox from feeling the necessity of a
Protestant Reformation. While some of the Protestant arguments were aimed at
Orthodox positions, which were shared by the Catholics on a surface level, many
of these arguments missed the Orthodox theological foundations on which these
positions are built. These two things considered, the Protestant Reformation
did not stop at the Eastern borders by coincidence, but because it was less
applicable in matters of faith and Practice.